


Sorted

by MarkoftheAsphodel



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu | Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War
Genre: F/M, M/M, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-28 01:03:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15037250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarkoftheAsphodel/pseuds/MarkoftheAsphodel
Summary: Forseti grants Lewyn what he always wanted. It just comes at the expense of everything else that mattered. Written for MrMissMrs Random for the prompt "Lewyn- Destiny. Paired or unpaired"





	Sorted

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MrMissMrsRandom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrMissMrsRandom/gifts).



> Several years ago I used some elements of this in the comedy 'fic "Sailane Scramble" over at the Pit O' Voles. This is not comedy, except of the "Dear Lord No" kind.

He’s facedown in the grass and the earth going up his nostrils might be horse shit. Maybe it’s just tainted by his own blood. It’s probably blood, because Lewyn knows he’s dying. Claude already told him his number was up before they came into this death trap, that fate was going to send him beyond the reach of the Valkyria Staff.

_Mother… Erinys… Ced._

_Father. You had such expectations of me. Look upon your son now…_

At least he won’t be a complete disgrace before his father, Lewyn thinks. Just a disappointment. 

-x-

Lewyn remembers his father as the kindest, gentlest, and best of men. His father was love, unconditional and without boundaries.

“My child,” he would say, presenting his sole heir to the burghers of Zaxon or the generals of the Mage Corps, and a few years later, after the pegasi rejected Lewyn, it was “my son”— and because Silesse loved the king they took him at his word. Lewyn listened as his father told him that because of who Lewyn was, how unique Lewyn was, he might prove to be the greatest of the Silessian kings, the equal or better of the Wind Crusader.

“You’ll know your people as no one else can,” Father said, holding Lewyn close during a sunset over the snow-capped mountains, when the pegasi that didn’t like Lewyn streamed back to rest for the night. “You’ll take us to places we can’t imagine.”

As he died, the king made his brothers swear three times over they’d support Lewyn’s claim to the throne— _my beloved son, my only child, my true heir_ — so they couldn’t weasel out of it the instant he was gone by saying there was no prince, there was never a prince. At least neither of Lewyn’s dear uncles proved so base as try to marry him,but once Lewyn turned fifteen, talk of marriage started up and just didn’t stop. Lewyn was the last major-blooded heir of Forseti and his marriage was an issue of national interest, or at least that’s what his uncles and the sages allied with them said.

It wasn’t just the idea of getting married that drove Lewyn to pack his things and leave in the night. His mother probably would’ve let him marry Annand if he asked, and Annand probably would’ve gone along with it the way she’d taken on teaching him how to make a girl happy. He’d figured out that his uncles had too many allies, and a fight over Lewyn was really a fight over Silesse itself, and he didn’t want anyone to die. He left because he couldn’t think of any other way out of it.

-x-

Lewyn lands in Agustria, draped in the loose clothes of a bard. Nobody minds if bards are a little strange— if anything, they’re expected to be. Bards protect the social order through their insolence. Bards defend the hierarchy of feudalism through their transgressions. If Lewyn strikes some as a little too pretty, all the better. Annand taught him how to bind up his chest, and his height and the billowing clothes do the rest of the job, though sometimes he regrets investing in a pair of white trousers.

When he’s playing the part of a bard he meets Silvia, and she turns out to be fun. She comes on strong but it turns out she’s thrilled to be kissed and cuddled. She doesn’t want a ride on his dick because she can’t risk a little mouth to feed and nobody wants to hire a pregnant dancer anyway. Since Lewyn hasn’t got what Silvia doesn’t want they have a good time together. The one time things get heavy, Lewyn knows what to do with his fingers thanks to Annand’s lessons and everybody’s happy. He performs his songs and a few minor feats for the common good and feels decently pleased with himself.

Performing in those small towns with Silvia he feels like he really becomes Lewyn, working every day on his speech and his act, learning to take both applause and thrown objects gracefully. Then some noble from Grannvale called Sigurd shows up on a white horse and Agustria starts to crumble one fragment at a time. As Lewyn realizes the pack of bandits he’s agreed to take on might actually be the harbinger of something worse, he wonders if the interloper from Grannvale is wholly to blame, or if trouble’s finding him somehow.

-x-

As Lewyn and Silvia approach the boundary of Sigurd’s camp, Lewyn sees something he really, _really_ doesn’t want to see: a small figure with the tall boots and short bobbed hair of a Silessian pegasus rider and a lance aimed at his direction. 

_Mother sent someone after me_ , Lewyn thinks, but as the sentry yells out “State your purpose!” Lewyn realizes this pretty little thing acting fierce is a boy, and beneath the sun’s glare the green uniform and green hair resolve into blue and it’s nobody Lewyn knows. He’s safe.

When Erinys and her squad do come for him, there’s no mistaking it, no way of pretending their white wings against the summer sky can be anything else. Lewyn stands on the ramparts of Sigurd’s base and calls off their attack. Erinys is happy to see him but two of her squad are down, one dead and the other dying, and Lewyn sees this Silessian blood spilled on Agustrian soil in the service of who-knows-what and who-knows-why and realizes he’s in a war that involves three, four, maybe five nations without even wanting to be.

But he’s become a performer, and despite the rising panic inside him he teases Erinys even as she tells him that Mother’s “a wreck” and Silesse needs him, wants him, must have his body and blood for their destiny.

He’s only been gone for two years, but it’s felt like another lifetime to Lewyn.

“I like the freedom I have now,” he tells her, then softens it to “Once I’ve sorted something out, okay?”

Two pegasus riders are buried at Evans Castle and the others go back to Rahna to report that Prince Lewyn, last full-blooded heir to Forseti, has been found.

-x-

Erinys stays, even as the whole military circus under Sigurd moves from Evans to Agusty. It’s a friction point with Silvia, who assumes herself to be Lewyn’s girlfriend, but Erinys provides unto Lewyn every service an Angelic Knight can render to the Prince of Silesse, from laying out his clothes in the morning to washing the blood out of them at night. Erinys knows his secret, just like her sister Annand did. Erinys takes care of that secret and everything else. The only line Lewyn won’t cross with her is fooling around, because while Annand was happy to teach him some things as a public service, Erinys feels too much. Those big eyes of hers fill with tears too easily. There’s no fun with Erinys outside of teasing her— just chaste devotion and the sanctity of the royal bedchamber and nothing in between for Dame Erinys. 

Lewyn’s doing a piss-poor job of sorting himself out. He likes Annand still. He likes Silvia. He loves Erinys, maybe. And now he’s fallen in the worst way for the worst possible person.

Sigurd Lord of Chalphy is a beautiful idiot. Emphasis on beautiful. Emphasis on idiot. His soul is so pure it shines out of his blue eyes the way light flashes along the silver blade of his sword, and Lewyn’s heart and knees both start to wobble around him— not every day, but enough. A few days out of every month Sigurd makes Lewyn’s world spin a little faster on its axis and that’s too much. When Sigurd asks to chat with Lewyn, “man to man,” about some not-particularly-tangled issue that Sigurd’s righteous mind can’t grasp on his own, Lewyn’s sending mental prayers to Forseti and every other god he can think of that Sigurd’s too dense and too much in love with his own Deirdre to notice this undercover bard has a problem going on. 

Sometimes it’s like he’s two people. Above the waist he’s Lewyn the bard, the unexpected fount of streetwise wisdom with a performer’s license for bad behavior. Below the waist he’s raw animal flesh that wants Sigurd’s sword of light— in a metaphorical sense, of course. When it gets too much to handle Lewyn teases Erinys until she cries, and then Silvia until she tries to hit him, and then goes off and annoys the trainee knight from Leonster who wears girlish boots because Finn’s basically his own country’s version of Erinys and won’t retaliate against a prince or complain to his own master that Lewyn’s being terrible.

Lewyn’s not really that good of a person. Maybe Erinys is right and he’s better than his uncles. Maybe the best of Forseti’s line is already dead.

Maybe his father was wrong.

-x-

When the uneasy peace of Agustria’s occupation turns into the inevitable war, Lewyn’s not any closer to “sorting himself out” and going home. Maybe he won’t. Erinys will go wherever he goes and Silvia’s still tagging along, finding new admirers in Sigurd’s army with no need to return to her own wretched home life. Lewyn’s got as much freedom as he can have in a military operation. Lewyn has options.

At least he has options until Sigurd doesn’t, and when they’re all penned up in a pirate fortress on the rocky coast of Northern Agustria with the Dominion in ruins and Grannvale’s real army closing in, white angelic wings come to their rescue. Annand does what Erinys couldn’t and drags Lewyn home under the pretense of giving Sigurd and his little army shelter.

On board the old pirate ship they’ve commandeered for the voyage, Bishop Claude of Edda, one of the many holy scions now caught up in this fiasco, wants to talk with Lewyn alone. Not “man to man,” but holy heir to holy heir, one Crusader to another.

Claude tells Lewyn of disaster, of calamity, of a great sweeping shadow over the continent, but most importantly he tells Lewyn that his _aegir_ is burning up fast and he’s going to be dead soon, dead in a way that Claude’s own holy powers can’t fix. Some of the other Crusader heirs have already seen to the sacred business of passing on their line. Some are at least working on it. Lewyn’s got a problem, and the first person he can think of who’ll fix that problem is Lord Sigurd of Chalphy. And really, the man owes the line of Forseti one for being given asylum. Surely he can’t turn Lewyn down.

-x-

Sigurd turns Lewyn down. When they’re all safe on the soil blessed by the Wind Crusader, Lewyn comes to Sigurd and tells him everything, bares his soul and enough of his body for Sigurd to understand this isn’t a joke, that Silesse needs Sigurd’s light-blessed sword and his Light-blessed cock to carry on the line of Forseti and save Silesse from ruin. And Sigurd of Chalphy, destroyer of two nations and all around beautiful idiot, turns him down because the war has cost him beloved Deirdre and he won’t betray her no matter whose fate is riding on it.

Some part of Lewyn expected this, to be perfectly honest. He reviews his options and decides to enlist Discount Sigurd into his scheme. Discount Sigurd is Finn, who’s gained half a head in height and a promotion in the meantime and now can’t be mistaken for any of the trainee pegasus knights running around Sailane Castle. He’s been swanning around like a young lord in a fancy coat with fancier weaponry, heightening the superficial resemblance to Sigurd caused by his bright blue hair and eyes, but under all the finery he’s still more like Erinys than anyone else Lewyn can find— serious, loyal, discreet, more than a little naive, and so _very_ dedicated to pleasing the descendants of the great Crusaders. 

Finn doesn’t run and doesn’t laugh when Lewyn explains what Silesse requires. He gets that this sacred duty involves going home to Leonster and keeping his mouth shut for the rest of his life. He doesn’t get how to make the interaction feel like anything other than some ritual duty— no Leonster equivalent of Annand has ever taught him any tricks that are compatible with what Lewyn’s got below the waist—and Lewyn has to whisper some shockingly dirty lyrics reworked to be about Leonster’s walking-cock-metaphor of a Crown Prince into his ear, but it works.

Finn does have some irritating questions, though.

“No, I don’t know any shape-shifting magic,” says Lewyn as they lie next to one another—barely touching, for Finn dislikes cuddling as much as Silvia craves it. “If I knew any, I wouldn’t have needed _you_.”

Lewyn really doesn’t want to know where some of those questions are coming from.

-x-

By the time the contingent from Leonster go home to round up reinforcements for Sigurd’s cause, Lewyn knows they can hang a “mission accomplished” banner on the business of Forseti’s heir. While not even the most gutter-minded of Sigurd’s army appeared to catch on to his secret before, now it takes the greatest care from Erinys to keep Lewyn looking like himself. Binding hurts. Some days everything hurts. Erinys keeps him from doing anything stupid and Annand gives him a lecture when she comes to visit.

His mother also comes— to visit Sigurd and to give Lewyn a different sort of lecture on what a bad son he’s been. At least he’s still her son.

Sigurd, as the grieving father of his own infant son, figures out that somebody was willing to do for Lewyn what Sigurd’s own honor wouldn’t allow him to do, but all his questions stay locked behind quirked lips and an arched eyebrow.

It’s all right. He’s sort of fallen out of love with Sigurd, maybe. There’s no longer any _maybe_ about how much he loves Erinys, who sings to the unborn child of the wind god as she rubs salve into Lewyn’s belly. Erinys is beyond angelic; she is his angel. He probably doesn’t deserve her love and she gives it anyway.

Lewyn births Ced into the waiting hands of Erinys, who places their son to her own breast and gives him the first taste of the milk she’s been wringing out of her virginal body just for this moment. Lewyn can’t imagine anything more holy… and then he sees the brand of Forseti glistening on Ced’s tiny unwashed shoulder.

They are blessed. The Wind Crusader has given his own blessing to their endeavors.

As soon as he’s gotten cleaned up, Lewyn is going to see his mother, to stand at the grave of his father and declare himself willing to take on his destiny.

-x-

His uncles start the civil war that Lewyn’s feared from the moment his father passed on. Two of the Four Angelic Knights turn traitor. Annand dies to a Grannvale noble’s arrow. Sigurd rises to the occasion as the hero of Silesse, the champion of Queen Rahna, no longer a beautiful idiot but a beacon of honor and justice. Lewyn enters the capital of Silesse in the wake of Sigurd’s victories to find his mother, exquisite in her sadness and resolute in her mercy. She forgives Lewyn his transgressions and places the tome of Forseti in his hands at last, and as a warm glowing whirlwind envelops his body, Lewyn glimpses the brilliance of the future that his father must have dreamed. Finally he understands, if for one moment, his place in this mad pageant of Jugdral’s piecemeal destruction. 

Claude might've been wrong. There’s something wonderful and shining beyond the curtain of fire that’s supposed to claim all of their lives.

Rahna adores her grandson and gives Lewyn her full blessing to marry Erinys, and his uncles and all their allies are too dead to give any objection as the Prince of Silesse at last takes a princess. Maybe he will be one day be the just and merciful king, and Erinys his queen. Maybe he will give Ced a world better than the one he was born into.

Silvia cries, but Bishop Claude gives her counseling. Lewyn wishes them well, as he’s pretty sure he knows how this will play out. Claude also needs an heir to Edda before fate catches up with them all.

-x-

Then everything goes to complete and utter irretrievable hell. Sigurd’s father Duke Byron dies and bequeaths him the shattered remains of the divine Tyrfing, Crusader Baldr’s blessed sword. Crown Prince Quan of Leonster and his Princess die in the desert along with the promised reinforcements (not Finn, though, who is safe— for now— manning Leonster’s home defense efforts, for which Lewyn is unexpectedly grateful). In the shadow of a mesa, hiding from the blistering sun, Lewyn tells Erinys to take Ced and lead some of the other women and children of their army back to Silesse for their own safety.

Claude’s dark and burning vision looks to be coming true, no matter what words of reassurance the night winds of the desert have for Lewyn. He counsels Sigurd to be cautious, to not take solace in their surprising victory over the treacherous Duke Reptor, to not give full credence to the sweet words of General Aida.

Sigurd, that beautiful idiot, marches into a trap despite every misgiving voiced by Lewyn, by Claude, by Prince Jamke of Verdane, by every man who sent his wife and child to safety, by every brave princess who swore to remain at Sigurd’s side if it meant death because it so obviously did. 

And so Lewyn ends up face-down in the blood-soaked grass, praying to the ghost of his father, because his vaunted destiny has come to almost nothing and Sigurd is a scattering of cinders.

-x-

Lewyn wakes to the silver light of the moon on his face. He hurts now in entirely different ways than he hurt when he died. He is covered in filth. He might be some kind of revenant because all he can think of is that he must go north, back to Silesse, to Mother and Erinys and little Ced.

He finds a pool, still and beautiful in the moonlight, and he strips off his ruined bard’s costume and washes the filth off his body.

This is not the body he died in. This is the body he always secretly, desperately wanted, the one he couldn’t attain by running away and didn't get through taking possession of Forseti. It’s the body of an unquestioned king, one that can give Erinys another child.

This might be the worst day of Jugdral’s history since the Last Crusade and Lewyn’s been given his own personal miracle. Lewyn covers his nakedness in the rags of his costume and stumbles northward toward his destiny as husband, father, king. 

**The End (sort of)**

**Author's Note:**

> Originally I was going to take this through Rahna's assassination, the birth of Fee, and Lewyn leaving once and for all just in time to find Julia but it was just too damn depressing. Y'all get the point.


End file.
